1 Comments:

Anonymous said...

I imagine that Washington and Lincoln would realize that even stock traders like to have an extra day off now and then. Neither of them seemed like particularly greedy people. Why should they want the markets to be open on a national holiday? Why not have the markets open on Thanksgiving and Christmas, too?

You mused about Gerald Ford a few months ago, saying he wouldn't have wanted the markets to close on his day of mourning. But I imagine that if it was that important to him, he would have specified it in his death bed wishes. He had ample opportunity to do so but did not write "Don't close the markets upon my death" into his funerary instructions. After all, Nixon decreed that he didn't want a state funeral, and so it was. He did not lie in state.

One can only assume that Ford either didn't care much either way, or he actually wanted people to take the day off in his memory. We'll never know.

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About Me

Ben J. Wattenberg is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the moderator of the weekly PBS television program Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, which is now being expanded to include a new one hour program Think Talk . He has served as a presidential speechwriter and advisor for president Lyndon Johnson. Ben also served as an aide and speech-writer to "Scoop" Jackson and VP Hubert Humphrey. He is currently working on a forthcoming book Tales of a Neo-Con ,an accompanying volume of selected posts from this blog, and highlights from the best of Think Tank.